Learner Connections and Interactions in an Open World Gaming Inspired Teacher Education Course

Dr. Gerald Ardito & Dr. Betul Czerkawski

Manhattanville College/The University of Arizona

Conceptual Framework

Research Questions

  1. What patterns of connections and interaction emerge between students and their instructor in an open world game type of instructional design?
  2. How are these connections and patterns of interactions the same and/or different than patterns of connections and interactions between students and their instructor in a more traditional type of instructional design?

The Context

  • 14 teachers/teacher candidates in a course entitled “CS for Teachers”
  • Conducted in a social learning platform built with Elgg software
  • Spring 2016 semester
  • Instructional design shaped by Arnab, et al. taxonomy

Taxonomy of Game Design Elements/Autonomy

The Methods

  • Students participate in the course via a series of units focused on the history of CS in K-12 schools, core research, and coding via robotics.
  • While they worked in this asynchronous course, they were able to interact with the teacher and one another.
  • Those interactions were extracted and analyzed.

Data Analysis, part 1

  • Social Network Analysis (SNA) - to visualize student networks for each learning activity
  • Every interactions was coded (codebook to follow)
  • Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) was used to visualize the epistemic space of each learning activity.

Data Analysis, part 2/Codebook

Findings - SNA, part 1/Reflection

Findings - SNA, part 2/Learning Logs

Findings - SNA, part 3/Read-Respond

Findings - SNA, part 4/Robotics

Findings - Coding Descriptive Stats

Findings - ENA, part 1/Reflection

Findings - ENA, part 2/Learning Logs

Findings - ENA, part 3/Read-Respond

Findings - ENA, part 4/Robotics-Coding

Discussion - What Did We Learn?

  • Learner connections and interaction patterns vs Arnab/autonomy taxonomy

  • Evidence of student autonomy and engagement

  • Future work

Questions?

Thanks